This item was cross-posted at The New Republic.
Chris Orr’s post at TNR about the early assembly work on Tim Pawlenty’s 2012 presidential bid is interesting in that he handicaps the Minnesotan primarily in terms of who he is not: not the flip-flopping, health-care-reforming Mormon Mitt Romney, not the disorganized and “goofy” Mike Huckabee, not the divisive and erratic Sarah Palin, and not the non-candidate David Petraeus.
Thus Chris captures the basic problem with Pawlenty ’12: what, precisely, is his positive appeal? Yes, he’s a bona fide cultural conservative; that checks an essential box, but you can’t throw a rock at any Republican meeting these days without hitting ten people avid to end legalized abortion and stop gay people from getting married. Yes, he coined a nice phrase–“Sam’s Club Republicans”–to illustrate the need for a broader GOP base. But absent any real agenda for appealing to these folks, it’s nothing but a slogan, and when two young conservatives, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam sought to fill out the phrase with actual policies in a recent book, they were generally hooted off the stage by their ideological brethren. Yes, he’s governed a blue state, but has never been terribly popular in Minnesota or had any real national following.
Pawlenty’s rather bland political profile was probably best reflected by the circumstances under which he was passed over for the 2008 vice-presidential nomination. According to Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson’s recently published book on the 2008 campaign, Pawlenty was a finalist along with Palin in the veep sweepstakes after other candidates were eliminated for a variety of reasons (Lieberman and Ridge because they were pro-choice, Romney because McCain forgot how many houses he owned and couldn’t have a rich running-mate). Fully understanding the riskiness of Palin, McCain went with her anyway after his pollsters told him Pawlenty wouldn’t win him any votes.
In other words, Pawlenty was, and remains, a fine “on-paper” candidate who doesn’t have much else going for him. Yes, he seems to be putting together a pretty good campaign team. And yes, he’s made at least one attempt to get into the manic spirit of today’s conservativism by flirting with “tenther” nullification theories. But unless he undergoes both an ideological and personality change of a major nature, he’s never going to be more than a third or fourth choice among the kind of hard-core conservative activists who dominate the Republican presidential nominating process (particularly in Iowa, where familiarity with Pawlenty as the mild-mannered governor of a neighboring state might actually hurt him).
Probably the best case for Pawlenty ’12 is that he’s the kind of candidate you might want to nominate in one of those years where your party can only lose by taking chances. You know, kind of like Bob Dole just after the 1994 elections.

I am flattered that Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics devoted a long column to a point-by-point response to my recent piece on all the predictions that 2010 is shaping up into a reprise of the 1994 “Republican Revolution.” I won’t conduct a point-by-point response to his response, because in many important respects, that misses the whole point I was trying to make.
The meme I was trying to refute was the idea that Democrats are doomed to disaster in 2010 because Barack Obama has “overreached” his barely-existing mandate by trying to implement his campaign platform, inviting a massive rebuke from the electorate that will confirm the country’s enduring “center-right” political character, and retroactively confim that the 2006 and 2008 Democratic victories were an ephemeral response to the incompetence (or according to some Republicans, liberalism) of George W. Bush and his congressional allies. I won’t attribute that pattern of thinking to Sean Trende, but it’s unquestionably at the heart of much of the GOP confidence about 2010, much more so than any close analysis of the PVI of specific House districts.
Given my motives, I should not, in retrospect, have succumbed to the temptation of making my own predictions, suggesting that House losses for Democrats might well come it at about ten. The truth is that I don’t know what’s going to happen in 2010, and nor does anyone else (as Trende admits). And that’s in part because I have no real clue what will happen to the U.S. and global economies between now and then–which, as Trende notes, I didn’t discuss in my own piece–or, of equal importance, the extent to which the Democratic Party will be blamed for bad economic conditions that palpably began during the Bush administration, driven largely by forces closely aligned with the GOP.
But that observation leads to a disconnect between 1994 and 2010 which I did mention, and Trende did not comment on: the exceptional weakness of the Republican Party right now. In 1994, Democrats were the eternal party of the congressional status quo. Anyone seriously desiring “change” in Congress had to seriously hope for a Republican victory, if only to shake things up. Voters today have a very recent experience with GOP rule at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, and it’s doubtful that the corruption, extremism and partisanship of the Republican Party at the height of the Bush-DeLay era will be forgotten very soon. That’s why the declining popularity of the Democratic Party this year has largely translated into dealignment, not realignment. And while you can make a credible case that an energized Republican base will dominate a low-turnout election in which the “dealigned” refuse to participate, it’s by no means certain or even probable at this point.
“Wave” elections, much less “revolutions,” depend heavily on these sort of national dynamics. District-by-district analysis of likely outcomes don’t produce “revolutionary” expectations, which is why most of the serious number-crunchers, from David Wasserman to Michael Barone, aren’t predicting a 1994-type result.
There is one specific point Trende makes that I want to talk about: his argument that the relatively high number of Democratic House members in districts with a pro-Republican PVI means that the “ideological sorting out” of the two parties in the 1980s and 1990s, which I cited as a big and nonrecurring factor in the 1994 results, was temporarily “reversed” in 2006 and 2008 by “pro-life, pro-gun” Democrats beating “corrupt or incompetent” Republican incumbents. These Democrats, argues Trende, are now ripe targets for the GOP.
Keep in mind that PVI measures the presidential performance of each party as compared to national percentages. So of the 66 Democratic House members in districts with a pro-Republican PVI, a significantly lower number, 49, are in districts actually won by John McCain (as compared to 34 Republicans representing districts carried by Barack Obama).
While the comparable 1994 numbers were in the same ballpark, they were in fact higher (79 Democratic incumbents in districts with a pro-Republican PVI, and 52 in districts carried by Bush 41, a number that is probably misleadingly low because of Ross Perot’s third-party candidacy). That matters when you are talking about major losses and “revolutions.” But the bigger factor, particularly in the South, in 1994 was the combination of open seats via retirement and redistricting (Trende dismisses the former factor because it’s too early to know if today’s tiny number of Democratic retirements won’t rise, and doesn’t mention the latter). And the “ideological sorting-out” I discussed refers to the irrefutable fact that 1994 marked the end of a decades-long situation where entrenched conservative Democratic incumbents benefitted from habitual ticket-splitting. That era is long gone, which is why I say that today’s Democrats in pro-Republican PVI districts seem to have gained some advantage that their 1994 predecessors (or at least those who didn’t retire or get gerrymandered out of office) didn’t have.
Consider a perpetually targeted southern Democrat, Jim Marshall of Georgia. Marshall’s district carries a pro-Republican PVI of +10, yet he won with 57% of the vote in 2008, and back in 2004, when there was no pro-Democratic “wave,” won with 63% of the vote (as Bush 43 carried the district with 58%) against a celebrated and lavishly financed Republican opponent making his second race against Marshall. Is he an exceptionally large bet to lose in 2010? I don’t think so. At this point, the Cook Political Report does not list his race as competitive. That could change, but then again, so could everything else that analysts are pointiing to as indicating a big Republican year.
One final point: Trende suggests that my notes on the invulnerability of the Senate Democratic majority is “knocking down a straw man,” since no one is specifically predicting a Republican takeover. That’s true, but that’s also why the 1994 analogies need to be tempered considerably. It was the top-to-bottom landslide nature of the 1994 results that made them constitute a “revolution,” however short-lived. Whatever happens in 2010, it’s not likely to constitute a “revolution,” and all the partisan and ideological freight carried by that term–the “center-right nation” meme, the Clinton analogies, and the constant mockery of Obama’s “over-reaching”–should be put back on the agitprop shelf where it belongs.

If you haven’t been following the dust-up over Rep. Alan Grayson’s (D-FL) take-down of the GOP health care “plan,” do check out this clip, posted by Open Left‘s Adam Green. Grayson responds con brio to GOP outrage over his recent remarks saying “the Republican plan is don’t get sick. And if you do get sick, die quickly.”
Natch, the Republicans got all hufty-pufty and bent out of shape about it and are demanding an apology. But rather than cave in and grovel, Rep. Grayson is turning the brouhaha into a teachable moment, shrewdly using the media attention to hammer home the fact that the GOP really doesn’t have much of a plan, other than obstruct and crush all reform. (Also check out Grayson’s earlier refusal to apologize here). Even when CNN Situation Room anchors Gloria Bolger and Wolf Blitzer try to nail him for being uncivil, Grayson refuses to back off, and attacks the GOP’s do-nothing approach to health insurance. They try to make him eat the false equivalency of his remarks with Rep. Wilson calling the president “a liar,” but Rep. Grayson ain’t having it, and uses the opportunity to deliver another broadside against the GOP’s non-existent health care plan.
Grayson’s response to GOP protests against his remarks is instructive. First time I heard Rep. Grayson’s remarks, I winced, thinking it was a tad over the top. Dems who are squeamish about incivility and such may have problems with Grayson’s attacks. But the GOP has been getting a lot of coverage with their incivility. The way Grayson has handled it turns the controversy into a net plus. What he is doing is deploying the GOP’s media manipulation tactics to good effect, using a controversy to make a case for Democratic reform in stark contrast to Republican obstruction. It translates into more coverage for the Dem reform proposals, which have gotten squeezed off TV by various GOP bomb-throwers, like Sarah Palin. Grayson’s media strategy is don’t spend much time defending yourself; Instead, use every opportunity to attack, and that’s a good lesson for Democrats. Well-done, Rep. Grayson.

it’s easy enough to find doomsayers who pronouce the public option a dead issue after the negative votes in the Senate Finance Committee this week. But Robert Creamer, author of Stand up Straight: How Progressive Can Win, has a potent antidote for the faithless in his HuffPo column on “Growing Momentum for Public Option.” According to Creamer:

First and foremost, voters’ support for a public health insurance option is as strong as ever…Last weekend’s New York Times poll showed that 65% of all voters support giving Americans the choice of a public option and only 26% oppose it.
More importantly, the public option is also popular in swing Congressional districts. The firm of Anzeloni Liszt just released the results of a poll it conducted in 91 Blue Dog, Rural Caucus and Frontline districts. The poll found that 54% of the voters in these battleground districts support the choice of a public option.
And the poll also found that the voters in these districts want reform and want it this year. The polling report says: Overall, 58% of voters believe the health care system is in need of major reform or a complete overhaul, and almost 59% are concerned that Congress will not take action on health care reform this year. The risks of inaction to Democrats in swing districts increases if voters perceive opposition stems from ties to the insurance industry, as 74% are concerned that the health insurance industry will have too much influence over reform.
Those kinds of polling results get the attention of Members of Congress.

Creamer goes on to argue that members of congress are beginning to face up to the fact that they have to produce reform that is actually affordable, if they want to get re-elected, and the public option is an essential element of any reform package that accomplishes this central objective. As Creamer concludes, “the odds are better by the day that before the holidays President Obama will sign a health insurance reform bill that for the first time provides Americans universal health insurance coverage — and includes the choice of a robust public option.”

Washington veterans were probably shocked yesterday when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced he was cancelling the chamber’s traditional Columbus Day Recess in order to make time for action on health care reform.
Pretty much everywhere other than in DC, Columbus Day is a minor holiday mainly beloved of Italian-Americans. But in Washington, it’s generally the occasion for a weeklong congressional recess, and often, in even years, the official excuse for the pre-election break.
To be clear, the Senate will take off two of the five days in the week of October 12, so Columbus’ legacy will not be completely profaned.